And so it goes…
I haven’t made the time or even thought much about adding to this blog for quite some time…I think it’s about 279 days according to my linked-in profile. I am not going to beat my self up about it. It’s obviously not something that fights for my attention. Besides, it doesn’t have a chance with the competition: a couple of part-time jobs, 3 children – on in each of elementary, middle and high school – and all needing a personal chauffeur at least 3 days a week to get them to music, friends or home from play rehearsals. Then there’s the two dogs, a cat and my kind and loving partner who gets the short end of the stick too often. A blog just isn’t a commitment I can add to my responsibilities on a regular basis.
Last week end I watched Julie and Julia with Meryl Streep and Amy Adams. In the ‘making of the movie’ section of the video, one of the commentators mentions that both Julie and Julia found a passion in food that led them to a commitment that helped them find success. And, naturally since I’m striving for some form of success in my own life the first thing that I notice about their drive, their commitment, their unrelenting ability to complete a monumental task was paved…with no children.
Perhaps this is an obstacle I’ve his behind, or some form of self-pity I wallow in; I’ve tried looking at it from all angles. I’ve tried imagining hiring a nanny and throwing caution to the wind and going off to find a ‘commitment’ that would bring me fame and glory. I’ve imagined spending every penny on cleaning women, working outfits, more education and professional development so that the community will know me so that I’ll be hired and have more work than I know what to do with – saying yes to the projects I like and turning clients away to other professionals I know and like.
And then I realize a couple of very important things. My children bring me fame and glory and I made a commitment to them years ago; I not only know them, I love them. I mean I really love them. I love to be with them. I love their individual spirits, their relentless energy for more of life, their willingness to participate in our lives in every way. I don’t want some substitute mother to share in their joys and respond to their woes. I don’t mind when others do; on the contrary I’m grateful for the variety of input they receive in their lives and I value the differences they each possess and the differences they seek out in advice from friends, family, teachers… it does take a village. And yet what we have is a solid relationship among the 5 of us. We all enjoy being together despite our differences and our individual abilities to drive the others crazy from time to time. We know this about each other. We are each others best friends, mentors, truth-sayers and button pushers. In the end, I guess I couldn’t be more grateful for the situation I am in. And the blog posts will have to wait.
And as I write this, I realize there are other women out there saying the exact opposite: If I didn’t work my butt off to have a cleaning woman and help for my children, we couldn’t survive. And this is yet another truth. We’re all working out butts off in different ways for different goals and rewards. I hope at least we build enough awareness to enjoy whatever is going on in our lives.
And so it goes… the blog posts will have to wait. And while I’m not ‘on line’ making a name for my self, I am busy working on other areas of my life long learning and growth and development. And I’m learning that there’s not all that much to say that’s different from last year. I’m finding some growth and truth in the silence of it all. I’m practicing more meditation and yoga and ‘being’ in different ways in my life and learning that…
so it goes… Enjoy it!
In peace and kindness,
zan
Suzanne Ballantyne
’simple practice’ – individual coaching and contract work; helping individuals and organizations develop healthy practices.
Women & Success: Building more awareness in life & at work
We achieve this way of thinking and living when we come to understand who we really are and how this world we live in is really just illusion. We are connected to and part of something so much bigger than the jobs we do, the families we come from and the things we keep in our homes. We are nature. We are pieces of God. We are little creators connected to the web of Life.
Reality vs. Perception at Mid-life – Go for Joy!
Yesterday at breakfast my husband read me a quote out of Jacqueline Kelm’s first book: Appreciative Living – The principle of appreciative inquiry in personal life (2005). Here is the quote:
“We don’t live in a world of reality, we live in a world of perceptions.”
- Gerard Simmons -
Last night I was on the phone with my 31-year-old niece and she was telling me about a visit to a massage therapist to whom she went to work out a kink she had from running. The masseur told her she shouldn’t be a runner; she didn’t have the body to be a runner. And yet, she grew up in a family where both her parents run – a lot!
The two of us talked briefly about how much we are influenced by our families – sometimes even forcing our selves to do things that don’t really suit us but that we do anyway because we want to feel like we are part of the family, that we belong. And there’s nothing wrong with this. I am sure my niece likes to go for a run – it has lots of pleasant associations for her like being with her parent(s) and the good feeling we all get after exercising – the satisfaction, the good fatigue, the feeling of a stronger body, the healthy appetite etc. etc. And yet, my niece also told me she’s never liked running as much as some other sports and so in some ways it just seemed such a relief to hear this man say she doesn’t need to be ‘a runner’.
How many of us have been living our lives in some way that doesn’t really feel all that great to us but we’re just so used to it and so conditioned to live in such a way that we don’t ask any questions; we just carry on. At what point do we allow our perception of things to become reality for us? We might even have learned a way of ’coping’ with our ‘reality’ in ways that include negative thoughts and negative self-talk but we’ve never thought of stopping to ask our selves, “Do I really want to keep doing this?” or “Do I really care if I maintain this practice in my family? The one I’m raising now?” or “How come I’ve never taken an art course? I’ve always liked art even though no one else in my family liked art.” Often we just accept our lives as our ‘reality’ rather than just a learned perception.
As we grow up and arrive at that stage in life where we begin to question assumptions and our ‘reality’; we might realize it is just our perception based on our upbrining and experiences. Many of us get a little (or a lot) introspective about life and aging and we may start asking “what’s this all about?” In fact this is a documented stage of adult development (Gail Sheehy, Kathleen Brehoney), usually taking place in women a little earlier than in men but very common at mid-life – so anywhere from 35 – 55 years of age.
The one thing I have learned about this stage and how to deal with it - how to reach out to your self and to trying new things; to open up your mind and heart to new possibilities - is that we are better at it when we do it with joy. Or perhaps, it’s more likely that adults develop to this stage because they have some joy in their lives; I’m not exactly sure which is the egg and which the chicken. But I recently came across this quote and realized how true it is:
“Psychologists who in recent years have taken up the study of positive emotions, find that joy widens one’s view of the world and expands imaginative thought. It activates. It makes both physical and intellectual exploration more likely, and it provides reward for problems solved or risks taken. Through its positive energies, it heals as well. One joy, the Chinese believe, scatters a hundred griefs, and certainly it can be an anitdote to fatigue and discouragement. Into those set back by failure, joy tranfuses hope.” Kay Redfield Jamison in Exuberance – The Passion for Life (2004)
Coaches and therapists typically ask their clients to spend time discovering what brings them joy. They may ask them to try some new things and see how it makes them feel because we know that inducing feelings of joy in a person helps them to open up their minds to new possibilities for their lives. It gets our clients unstuck; able to see opportunity in their lives. Most importantly, it opens up our hearts to the rest of our lives.
I don’t know yet because I am only 45 years old but I have a feeling that opening up the heart is one of the keys to staying engaged in life as we age and helping us cross over when life as we ‘perceive’ it comes to an end.
In peace and kindness,
Suzanne “zan” – www.simplepractice.net – Life Coach in Cary/Raleigh, NC
Work – at home, on the career path, in the garden.
It’s late and I am the type of person who tries to get 8 hours of sleep for my sanity and my immune system. However, this build-your-own-career while parenting three children, volunteering in the community, learning about networking and planting a garden does call for a late night once or twice a week. I am trying to limit it to once – just to get that little extra done.
I debate whether or not it’s time to let go of one of my part-time jobs that I keep for income and occasionally wonder if I would’t be better off in a “real job”. I only linger with this thought briefly as I know deep down I’d be ignoring my own dream to reach out to people, to continue to bring my message to the world about peace of mind, self-leadership and happiness. (see my favorite quote about happiness on my website: http://www.simplepractice.net/aboutsuzanne.html)
I also realize that creating your own career path allows a type of freedom that any job I could go out and start now would never allow me… like say for instance, going to harvest some bamboo in the middle of the morning on a Tuesday; or reading to grade four in the middle of a Monday afternoon; or even an hour walk with the dogs who I couldn’t leave in the car ’til my lunch hour; not to mention the commute and the vacation restrictions. I know it’s not for everyone; however I am grateful every day for the possibilities, and one day at a time they play them selves out.
I continue to grow an awareness of my habits. Today I watched a short video at www.selfgrowth.com about Steven Covey’s, 7 Habits of Highly Successful People and I am glad I happened upon it. I already knew about them, and! I am human and I need reminders every day; I am glad I know that. I choose to continue to do what it takes to remind my self and to stay on my path.
Reading over one of my previous blogs I realized that I had introduced our garden – which has now been tilled – with much thanks to my loving, gifted and hard working partner. He has also dug the holes for the bamboo posts which sit majestically (we found some pretty good sized stalks!) around the garden plot. We have four boxes constructed out of treated cedar and the beautiful beginnings of cabbage, broccoli, basil and onions on the kitchen window sill. We still need to finish placing the fence around the posts and I am a little late but I am going to plant some spinach and lettuce tomorrow after I work the soil and add some fertilizer. The rest of the plants will go outside in a couple of weeks. All this to say the scavenger hunt for the bamboo was entirely worth it! Just another reminder of what I’m grateful for…
Tonight, my youngest came and asked me: “Are you coming up?” He likes to be ‘tucked in and many nights I oblige him; what’s not to like about snuggling up to one of your favorite people and telling each other you love them? Yet sometimes I realize I just cannot interupt the rhythm of my work and in this case I know my husband is available for the bedtime practice. I gently explained my situation to him and he understood, quietly saying: “Okay” while withdrawing from the family room where I am working. To my pleasant surprise and yet not uncharacterisically when I think about it, my 14 year old daughter stepped in and “loved” her brother in my place, gently embracing him and leading him upstairs. I know I’ve been a good model; I also honor the unique beauty in each of my three children and I believe the respect I have tried to show them as often as possible is starting to come back to me. This too is part of the balance of parenting – being ‘there’ for them and staying ‘here’ for you in a kind and loving way. What kind of a model would I be if I didn’t pursue my own dreams?
As you know if you’ve read any other things I’ve written or looked at other information about me on the web, one of the big focusses of my work is a healthy work/life balance. I’ve heard others say there’s no such thing and yet who said balance is static? It’s positively! dynamic and the value of being able to find your balance – even if you stumble from time to time – is that it allows you to have all that you love in your life without any big sacrifices. At least this is how I see it. For someone like me with a renaissance soul that thrives on lifelong learning and variety in every day, this is the only way to live with joy and peace in my heart.
Wishing you the same, in peace and kindness,
Suzanne “zan” – www.simplepractice.net – life coach in Cary/Raleigh, NC
Discovering Kindness… again
I went on a 2-day silent retreat last week end. It was my second silent retreat. The first one was 5 days. My husband made a comment or two before I left that suggested these retreats are like going to the spa… far from it. I am only a beginner but I am learning that silent retreats are intense personal and spiritual work. And it’s worth it!
There is a documentary called “Touch the Sound” about Evelyn Glennie – a drummer and performing artist who has been deaf since the age of 8. In the movie, Glennie says, “Silence is probably one of the heaviest sounds you’re ever likely to experience.” Of course I cannot imagine being deaf but I am aware of how difficult it is for most people to sit in silence; including me. We don’t like the silence for some reason and yet we come from it and we return to it at the beginning and the end of our lives. I am coming to enjoy the silence more and more; it calms the mind, helps with focus and allows for profound thoughts to stir.
It occured to me that days of silence and meditation are akin to the “morning pages” that Julia Cameron asks us to write in The Artist’s Way. Over time you discover what thoughts keep coming to the surface. With this knowledge you gain wisdom into your deepest fears and needs. These are the things in life that block our flow, our progress, our success and sometimes our arteries. We cannot clear them out until we face them down. And we do this with love and kindness for ourselves. We grow to understand more and more that the love and kindness we give to our selves, we give to the whole world.
The difficult part for me – and I know I’m not alone – is the ongoing practice of maintaining loving awareness so that I can continue to be kind to my self – especially in difficult moments. It is so difficult to override our knee jerk reactions – the habits we’ve had since childhood in some cases – to moments that make us cringe. It’s in these moments precisely that we want to stop, find loving awareness and bring gentle kindness to our hearts so that we can keep them open and grow them deeper, larger, wider still. The more I love my self, the more I love. The more I love, the more peace and happiness I create.
Coincidentally, one of the retreat teachers was deaf. It was necessary for each of us or for one of the other participants to sign the first letter of every word spoken so that Jane (not her real name) could understand what was being said during the opening and closing meetings and during short question periods.
I am familiar with the signing alphabet so I had the opportunity to speak to Jane while signing the first letter of everything I said. I found my self being grateful for Jane’s deafness. I was forced – in a very good way – to speak slowly and deliberately. For someone who can talk like the wind, sputtering out words that are often non-essential and gratuitous, this was a humbling experience. I actually thought of and mentioned it to my family when I returned home – to no avail. And yet, the more I participate in these retreats and these practices of loving awareness and sitting and walking meditations, the more I model this stillness, this peacefulness, this kindness and presence for my children. This alone is worth the work of kindness.
In peace and kindness,
Suzanne “zan” – www.simplepractice.net - life coach, speaker in Cary/Raleigh, NC
Work/Life/Adventure Balance
To borrow a term from Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin, today I spent some of my “life energy” gathering some bamboo from a wooded area not too far from my home. This is one of our favourite spots to run the dogs. One day my husband and I took a new trail and came across a large pile of bamboo. Further investigation led us to a nearby home that had obviously been harvesting or thinning the bamboo out of their yard.
Our intention is to build a fence.
After checking our email, walking the dog and doing some administrative work, my husband and I went off on our bamboo adventure and spent about 90 minutes cutting and cleaning several long – 15 ft? – pieces of bamboo which we then attached to the roof of the car complete with a hazard ribbon tied to one of the stems at the back.
We got it all home safely. The idea is to replace an ugly chain link fence that stretches from our garage across to the fence that joins that neighbour’s yard. I don’t know how long it will be before we get around to building the fence – hopefully this spring. I just felt so resourceful and grateful to find enough wood to do the job without spending a penny beyond a little gas to get it home.
No, we weren’t working for money for those 90 minutes but we have saved our selves hundreds in fencing materials so in a way we did get paid for our work.
I’ll be blogging a lot about this as my husband and I continue on our adventures developing two businesses of our own. We realize in some ways we’ll have to work harder than we’ve ever worked and we also know the freedom that comes from being your own boss. And today was another example. Wednesday we’ll be tilling the yard to start our garden for the summer so we can grow our own vegetables.
Suzanne or “zan” is the creator of ’simple practice’ – www.simplepractice.net – Life coach, speaker in Cary/Raleigh, NC
Heal your self, Heal the planet – start now!
Alot of my reading over the last decade has touched upon healing. I have come to understand that this healing has so many dimensions that going to the doctor for an antibiotic or procedure or some other kind of remedy is really only the tiniest fragment or component of healing. I might even say I have learned that this form of healing is only superficial. It deals with the current problem invading the body/mind at any one particular time. It does not in itself help with the healing over time. I have come to understand that the deeper lasting effects of healing, the greater healing of the mind, of the body and of the spirit are far more powerful when they come from within, from conscious living. What some call “awakening”.
Deeper healing that has to do with the immune system, the healthy psyche and the soul of the person or the spiritual extension of the body occurs in a different time frame, or maybe even on a different plane of existence. It is hard for me to say as a lay person and yet I am starting to catch glimpses of the potential for this more holistic healing after years of reflection and experience. There is the plane of existence on which most humans beings are too busy to pay attention to any given moment; they are totally wrapped up in what they are ‘doing’.And then there appears to be a plane of existence in which a person only pays attention to any given moment and how they are ‘being’. It’s called consciousness or enlightenment and many movements have embraced it but it does seem to be coming to a crescendo.
I have been told by spiritual students that ancient cultures understood that if you could heal something about yourself or your family in your lifetime that the healing would stretch across seven generations both forward and backward. I know it is difficult for us to conceive of this understanding of time and yet any real consideration of the matter of time will help you understand that all we have is now in any given moment. Yesterday, even 5 minutes ago is gone and this afternoon or tomorrow isn’t here yet. In fact, tomorrow may never come . Although we’d rather not dwell on this notion we can understand it – especially if we have ever lost a loved one who didn’t make it through a day or a night.
Knowing about this is one thing, actually ‘knowing’ it in our ‘being’ is much harder to sustain. It is the goal of many masters to live entirely in the moment and yet for most of us, this is beyond our reach on a regular basis. Even those of us who have tried to practice for years; somehow the “awakened” state continues to evade us in our every day lives. Much of this has to do with the years of what we were practicing before we had any conscious experience with enlightenment. Just as it’s hard to give up any habit, it is hard to practice a new one full time right off the bat. And yet this is why meditation and yoga are so beneficial for change, for making transitions in our lifestyles they help us live more and more in the moment. They require much commitment and patience in the beginning and yet the benefits far outweigh the early discomforts.
Having come to these conclusions after much reflection I have come to understand the healing of heart disease in my own family in new ways. I can see first hand how consciously and intentionally we have taken on new lifestyle practices and habits to protect ourselves from dis-eased genes.
I lost my father to heart disease when I was 20; my father was a couple of months short of his 56th birthday. He lost his father to heart disease when my grandfather was in his early 60’s. My father’s uncle died of heart disease in the 1930’s - roughly when he was in his late 30’s. (My dates are a little fuzzy but the point is understood I hope). My oldest brother is 57 now. He has no problems with his heart.
My own father had his first heart attack in his late thirties - like his uncle before him – and survived. He had a second heart attack about 7 years later in 1970. Medical technology was only in the nascent stages of its breakthrough procedures in by-pass surgery. My father was not a candidate because of his previous heart attack. He recovered in hospital from this second coronary over a periof of 3 – 4 weeks. My memory is fuzzy. I was in grade two so I was seven. I wasn’t allowed to go to the hospital to visit him. I waved from the street although I’ve never been sure it was my father I was waving too all those floors up in the window. It breaks my heart more today to remember this than it did then, as I recall. At home, I slept with his yellow terrycloth housecoat for comfort and the reminder of the smell of him. Thirteen years later on the curling rink, my father died of a massive heart attack, no help from the defibrilators the EMS workers tried out on the rink. I can still feel the sting of losing him now if I think about it.
In terms of healing at our house when I was growing up; we did things like removing salt from the table and switching to margarine from butter – later learning that the hydrogenated oils in the margarine were no help. My father took an aspirin a day for years and saw quite a few specialists for more opinions. My mother worried if he shovelled snow or lifted anything heavy. We did a lot of sports growing up from tennis and swimming to skiing and skating. My brothers played baseball and football and hockey. Two out of five of us took up smoking like my father and mother. My mother quit after my father died. My sister and I also quit evetually in our early 30’s. Everyone in my family has walked or run at least one marathon. We are all active in our lives every day and none of us has high cholesterol. I am the youngest at 45. It would appear that we have succeeded in doing a lof of healing of the heart disease we carry in our genes. We have consciously adopted different lifestyle habits which my parents initiated for my father’s health but which we carry forward for our health and the health of our children. This realization has given me great hope and understanding.
I have never asked my brothers, although I am sure they have been inspired and motivated to stay healthy to avoid heart disease and to keep their own hearts healthy. Somehow as a woman I think I believed I wouldn’t be touched by heart disease but I have become less naive over the years and as I have read the research about heart disease in women. None of the grand children are growing up in homes where there is second hand smoke. We have all switched to eating fresh and frozen vegetables instead of things that come out of cans which we never learned to like in the first place. It may be less expensive to feed a family with processed food, but health is far more valuable. And as I’ve learned, healing on the superficial level is far more expensive and unenlightened than learning to make healthy lifestyle changes for future generations.
This is a story of physical healing. I believe this healing can happen on the psychological level as well, putting an end to low self-esteem, unhealthy habits, unhappy relationships and maybe even abuse with the right kind of help. Actually as I understand it, different types of abuse – both physical and psychological (and often not even consciously intended mild abuse) cause physical and mental dis-ease of all different types because the mind/body/spirit are all so closely connected. First we have to recognize the ‘dis-ease’ we feel. We have to pay attention to our selves, to awaken to what we are feeling and doing and how it all makes us feel about ourselves and our lives and what the consequences might be. Then we need to start to pay attention to now and understand what sort of shifts we need to make in our thinking and in our behaviour as we get on the path of awakening to more and more moments of the possibility for healthier conscious living. There is much healing to do and much peace to discover and the journey is long. It may not seem to happen in our own lifetimes, but it will happen one moment at a time, in every ‘now’. Did my father heal us ? or are we healing him and his ancestors and our offspring?
Now I am beginning to understand that what we do to others we do to ourselves and vice versa.
I hope I can stay awake enough to make as many moments as possible healthy and peaceful moments. Healing our selves and our communities and ultimately our planet are worth it, don’t you think? Peace is possible right now. Take a breath and feel it. With love and compassion, peace begins with each one of us…now.
peace,
Suzanne “zan” Ballantyne – www.simplepractice.net – Life Coach, Speaker in Cary/Raleigh, NC
Starting new things, first day out…Suzanne Ballantyne
And in this way, we find the courage to take the first baby step. So often we find we can actually take a few more steps, write a paragraph, and eventually finish the book or run the whole race … one step at a time.
